


Quiet

by DaytonBay



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:12:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaytonBay/pseuds/DaytonBay
Summary: Sansa is sad. Stannis would like to fix that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling a bit melodramatic. So here we are. For the purposes of this story, the Red Wedding happened before the Battle of Blackwater. It just did. And despite the fact that it makes no canonical sense whatsoever, I imagine Sansa being around 18 here. 
> 
> GRRM owns these characters. I do not.

He’d won her, along with the castle and all seven kingdoms and that ugly throne of death. After drawing the attack of wildfire onto a dummy armada in Blackwater Bay, Stannis’ men had bled across the city and into the keep, sweeping away the reign of the Lannisters in a single, brutal battle. Tyrion had died defending King’s Landing from a man he’d assured Sansa would be a far better king than any man living, expecting himself. He’d even sent a raven to Jon telling him that Sansa was in King’s Landing, alive but guarded as a hostage. Tyrion had urged Jon to secure her quickly if the battle went Stannis’ way. It had been treason to even mention such a possible outcome, but Tyrion had never cared much for such arbitrary limits, may the Old Gods watch over his soul.

Sansa had been in the last place on earth that still belonged to Joffrey: the throne room. She was stripped to her shift and beaten bloody by the last remaining Kingsguard on her betrothed’s orders. It hadn’t been Jon that found her; Stannis himself had burst into the hall with a furious scowl and demanded that Joffrey surrender to him. Things had deteriorated from there, and it ended with Sansa’s head on a block as knights and lords from both sides stood frozen, with Joffrey wielding what had once been her own father’s sword in an arc towards her neck.

She still had her head, of course. Standing behind his much-hated king, the Hound had taken Joffrey’s head, and saved Sansa’s. She’d wept with gratitude and relief, but Stannis – who had planned a public trial for both Cersei and her evil son - had called it unwarranted and sent Sandor to the Wall. She had still been shaking, covered in Joffrey’s arterial blood, mourning Sandor’s banishment and his sacrifice, when Stannis had first mused aloud on the subject of marriage. His wife was dead, it made sense to reward the North for their support, especially as her father had given his life for Stannis’ claim.  Even Jon, who had finally stumbled into the throne room through a sea of blood and was clutching his sister’s exhausted body to his chest, looked stricken by Stannis’ words.

_I’m certain my father would want to see me safe in Winterfell for his troubles_ , Sansa thought but did not say, _not irrevocably tied to yet another king_.

Jon had offered Winterfell, but even as he said the words, they both knew Sansa would have to stay in King’s Landing. She smiled her last ever smile for her brother, a legitimised Stark at last, then cried as he rode away to rule the North. All of her other brothers and both of her parents were dead, her sister missing. He was the last family she had.

She decided at that point to simply stop speaking beyond the completely unavoidable; it would be a mercy, after being forced to chirp those stupid platitudes that Sandor had hated for so long. She managed to marry Stannis without ever having to say a word, his overwhelming will and heavy cloak doing all the talking that anyone needed. She hoped her smile looked serene and not sickly, but Stannis did not seem to have any expectations of her happiness with this union. There had been numerous mentions of her duty to the realm, and a number of his need for heirs. 

Nevertheless, he had not forced a consummation on their wedding night. He ate with Sansa every sundown for the first sennight in her chambers, talking at her of politics and rebuilding and land management. She smiled and again hoped that it passed for serene. He growled and frowned at all around him, barked at his small council, sent soldiers and knights scurrying away in fear, but he always spoke kindly to her. His tone could be cross or exasperated, but his words were far more gentle than anyone else received, apart from his own daughter. If he minded the paucity of Sansa’s conversation, he never said. And when he finally decided that they must carry out their duties as a married couple, he was attentive and respectful, leaving her shift on, moving his hands with utmost care over her body. She felt not a moment’s pain, ever. She did not make a sound.

Sansa tried, best she could, to limit the number of people in contact with her. She attended court only ever at her husband’s side, and she never spoke in that hall. It had taken all from her that it ever would; she would not spare it another syllable.

Sansa had but one handmaid who attended her in her chambers, but even that maid was never allowed to see the Queen unclothed. Even with the most difficult dresses, Sansa put on a shift and stepped into the dress herself, allowing the handmaid in only when she had dressed herself as far as possible. The only person with any physical contact with Sansa were her husband and this one girl. Every morning before sunrise, the girl would organise the filling of Sansa’s bath, so that when the Queen awakened, distraught from yet another round of nightmares, she could try to recapture an hour of happiness from her silent days.

Every morning, Sansa waited until she was completely alone in her chambers with the full bath, windows closed and shuttered even in the heat, heavy curtains drawn across the windows, and the door both locked and barred. Then she would pull her shift over her head and take a deep breath in and out. She’d rub her hands gently over the babe growing in her belly and grin her biggest, widest smile, and very very quietly, so that no one listening in the corridor could possibly hear, she would sing. She sang every epic tale of romance she had ever loved herself as a child, all the happy songs of glittering knights in golden armour and their pure love for virtuous maidens. She sang the traditional praises of spring and flowers and trees, about the old gods and their jealousies and passions. She would smile and sing and splash lazily in her bath. She never grew bold enough to open the window for the early sunshine and a breeze; she made do with candles to light her bathtime. But this, her secret time with her babe, Sansa adored. She felt just like herself again, and she held long, one-sided conversations with her child, whispering over and over assurances of love. She felt, briefly, happy.

The only imperfection in this situation was the thin door that connected her bedchamber to her husband’s: this he had forbidden her to bar. In theory, he could enter at any time. In practice, however, she saw him only rarely, and he always informed her well in advance that he would knock for her that evening. Sansa eyed that bar on the door every day, and every day she wondered if she dared disobey him, to lock it just this once, to make her solitude that bit more safe.

Instead, she bathed facing that door, to make sure that no one could enter with her unawares.

She’d known she was with child within two moon-turns of her marriage. She considered telling the king, of course, as she assumed he would avoid her bed if he knew her to have conceived his heir already. However, she rather enjoyed her husband’s infrequent and circumspect attentions. He always held her for a long while afterwards, and he often succumbed to sleep, and Sansa found that she slept without her usual terrors with him beside her. Besides, she was young and had never been with child before; she knew that her condition would not become obvious for moons yet. And she coveted her time with this babe that no one knew of but her, the child completely safe from every scheming wretch in the keep. She kept her happiness to herself.

Now, though, it seemed that her husband had noticed something amiss about her, and he had informed her three days earlier, while breaking their fast in the great hall, that he would send the maester for her. She had stared down at her porridge and lost her desire to eat, though she had been really very hungry that morning.

So Stannis sent for the maester; Sansa sent the maester away. When Stannis sent him back, Sansa barred the door to her chamber and had not answered the man’s repeated calls to allow him entry. She had been pushed far enough, often enough, but it seemed to her that she should be able to refuse this maester’s touch. She tried to think of words that might explain all of this to her husband, but they all turned to ash in her mouth, and so she sat waiting for the moment when Stannis thundered up the stairs and ordered her personally to open the door.

…

Maester Tarly lingered outside the Queen’s door, pacing a few feet this way and that along the corridor. He twisted his hands in his lap. He would have to inform King Stannis that the Queen had refused him entry; he had been ordered to attend her by Lord Seaworth, and that order had come direct from the king. Still, he hesitated to take the tale to the king.

Jon – now Warden of the North - had asked him to watch out for Sansa, and Sam took Jon’s word as law. He had often watched the Queen walking through the gardens or the corridors of the keep, always alone, her guards a respectful distance from her. She never spoke to them, never asked for anything. She ate what was put in front of her and expressed no preferences. Her silence grated at his nerves and kept him up nights.

Once, he’d seen that the King’s attendants, flustered by some temper of his, had neglected to provide the Queen with water or wine at a meal of salty fish stew and brown bread. She did not ask for any and did not complain, simply struggled through the meal. Tarly had followed her at a long distance when she rose from the table; she found the nearest fountain in a secluded section of the garden and, using her hand as a cup, she drank and drank and drank. She would not trust anyone in the castle even with the information that she thirsted.

So in all that he’d guessed her secret months ago, Sam did not want to betray Sansa’s pregnancy to her husband. He ached for Jon’s sister, battered and abused and passed about from one monarch to the next. He wished that he could pack her up with Gilly and Little Sam and sweep her up to Winterfell.

But now he tapped his foot outside her locked door, wondering how he might convince her to let him in. Spying left and right down the corridors, he sent the only guard off with an innocuous message for the king, saying that he had arrived at the Queen’s door and was awaiting her leave to attend her.

“Sansa,” Sam crouched down and called softly through the door. “Sansa, it’s me, Sam. Maester Tarly. You, uh, know who I am anyway. I knew your brother, Jon, very well while we were at the Wall. It was Jon, actually, who sent me to Old Town to train as a maester in the first place.” Sam spoke on, telling her amusing tales of Jon, trying to establish a connection, but all he earned himself was her steadfast silence. “Sansa, if you don’t let me in, I will have to report back to him. There’s no way around it.”

But no sooner were the words out of his mouth, than the King strode down the hall and stopped outside her door. “My Queen!” he called out, his face disapproving and his tone even more so. “You must open this door to the maester, whom I sent for myself…”  The door opened from within immediately, and when Sansa stepped gracefully aside to clear the entryway, Stannis shoved Sam ahead of him into the room.

Stannis stalked up to her and demanded: “The maester has been trying to gain admittance to your room for several days now. What ails you?”

Sansa stood nervously with her back to the shuttered windows, and she answered so quietly that Sam could barely hear her: “Naught ails me, Your Grace.” It seemed to Sam that they could have stabbed her through the heart with a lance, and her answer would have been the same. But then she levelled with them: “It is only that I am with child.”

Stannis’s eyebrows shot up at that, and he gawped at her. “You are with child? But..When did you discover this?”

Sansa remained very still and straight. “I am almost six moons along, Your Grace, by my counting.”

“What? _Six_ moons?” Stannis approached her and slipped his arms around her middle, then very gently traced her belly with one hand. Beneath her gown, Sam could just make out the barest beginnings of swelling. “Why did you not tell me as soon as you knew?” Sansa flinched slightly at both his words and their harsh delivery. “You must let Maester Tarly look you over. I would know that both you and the babe are healthy.”

Sansa heaved a shaky breath and looked dead at Sam. She seemed to close down completely as she sat, defeated, on the edge of the bed. Sam tried reaching out to pat her hand, but before he could touch her, Sansa snatched her hand away and hid it behind her back.

Sam quirked a nervous smile and tried to placate the king: “If the Queen reckons six moons, I am sure she is correct, and there is no way I could give a more accurate estimate. Have you had an appetite, Your Grace? Any illness?”

“No illness,” she responded. Sam knew that to be an outright lie. Some moons back, he’d watched her pushing her food about and looking even more pale and withdrawn than usual, but he’d never said a word as her sickness did not seem worse than the usual for pregnant women.

Sam backed towards the door and addressed Stannis. “Your Grace, I believe all the Queen requires is rest. Perhaps it would be best if she took some of her meals here in her chambers, rather than tiring herself in the Great Hall.” At this, Sam fancied he saw a little fleck of hope in Sansa’s face, and he nearly punched the air. After months of trying, he had finally done something that might make Sansa happy.

“Aye?” Stannis frowned. “Are you feeling tired, my lady? Yes, perhaps it is best that you sequester yourself a bit from the court, if you prefer it thus. Maester Tarly, inform the cook and Lord Seaworth that I shall be dining with the Queen this evening, and that they should not expect me.”

Sam nearly bashed his own head against the wall. He wanted to allow Sansa a greater measure of her treasured privacy, but he had only managed to saddle her with the king’s undivided attention. The queen, however, looked unperturbed by the arrangement. _Huh_ , he thought, _perhaps it is simply everyone else’s company that she seeks to avoid_.

…

On the first morning that he heard the soft singing coming from the adjoining chamber, Stannis had been convinced it was a maid humming tune. His wife did not sing.

Jon had mentioned how his little sister had enjoyed songs and romantic stories as a child; he’d recalled being roped in to rescue princesses from dire situations, or to act the villain as Robb rescued her. She danced with grace and spirit and a true love for the artistry of movement, he’d said. But Stannis had seen no evidence of such fanciful behaviour. Sansa rarely spoke, much less sang, and indeed almost never smiled. She smiled at Shireen, true, but never in a way that suggested such singing possible. This singing sounded happy.

Once he had established that it was indeed Sansa’s voice – melodic and sweet and so low that he had to press his ear to the cracks of the door in order to hear even the outline of the song – Stannis made sure to be in his chambers at the exact moment of her bath whenever possible. She rose earlier even than he, and the maid always had her bath filled by the time the sun peaked over the horizon. He had at first imagined that she enjoyed having the first rays of sun lighting her morning ritual, but passing beneath her window a few weeks later, he noticed it was shuttered at the appointed hour. She bathed by candlelight, then. And, as he knew her handmaiden was sent forth for the hour, she bathed alone.

He never mentioned the singing. He understood, somehow, that neither he nor anyone else was meant to know of it. He wondered at times if there was any way to draw that sort of happiness into the open, but he also accepted that of the many people who might make Sansa smile, it was bloody unlikely to be himself.

…

Well, now he knows, Sansa sighed as the door swung closed behind her husband and the maester. Not even born, and the babe was no longer her secret love, but the Heir to The Throne, her body subject to inspection at the king’s demand. Maybe it was a girl, and then the king and council would murmur their disappointment and then give it not another thought. But a boy would belong to the king and the court and the realm.

She’d avoided the maester’s inspection thus far. Perhaps if she complained about nothing and kept even more out of sight, they would leave her be? She would try.

…

“Six months! How could she say nothing at all for all this time?” Stannis stalked through his solar, growing more and more infuriated with his wife by the moment. “Surely this is negligent of her, and dishonest. She should have been in the maester’s care all this time. She has lied to me, keeping this news from me. Of my own child!”

Davos had been listening to this tirade for half an hour. He’d been waiting for Stannis’ anger to ease off the boil, but when it seemed that the king was only growing more critical of his young wife, Davos intervened: “Would you say that the Queen trusts you?”

Stannis stopped his pacing and frowned. “I have never given her cause to doubt me,” he finally answered.

“Right, so. But does she trust you?”

“She has never barred the door that connects our rooms…”

“Aye, but you ordered her not to do so. We already know her to be obedient.”

“Davos, what in the seven hells are you getting at?”  

“Your Grace, the Queen has no one here that she can trust…”

Stannis scoffed loudly. “Nonsense! She can trust me. Yourself. The maester is a trifle bumbling but is a good man who came at the recommendation of her own brother.”

Davos stood still, his hands behind his back, and tried again: “We have established that she does not trust you.” Stannis glared at his hand. “Come, Your Grace, if she trusted you, she would have told you about the babe. And I am your hand, so she cannot trust me, and Marya is my wife, so she’s also suspect. The maester is unknown to her, and she has not shared more than two dozen meals with her own brother since she was a child.” He waited a moment as Stannis considered the evidence. “Have you seen her speaking to anyone at all?”

“She speaks to Shireen daily,” Stannis bristled, thinking on the matter. “She speaks to me at times. A few words, anyway.”

“She is utterly isolated, Your Grace.”

Davos knew his king well, and little could surprise him about Stannis’ behaviour. But he still flinched when Stannis threw the water pitcher across the room to shatter.

“Your Grace, I apologise, I know that my observations have displeased you…”

“It displeases me that she is unhappy!” Stannis shouted, then banged open the door of his solar and stormed out in a rage. Davos followed for just long enough to ensure that the king was not headed to the Queen’s chamber in that temper. When he saw Stannis stomping to the training yard instead, he turned back down the corridor.

Davos did know his king, true, but until that moment he had never considered that Stannis might understand unhappiness, or deem it an undesirable state of being. 


	2. Chapter 2

Stannis had announced the news himself to his small council, of course, to much congratulation and unnecessary drinking.  Before this announcement, he had not considered the profundity of Sansa’s secretiveness, but he considered it now.

No matter her condition, and no matter that the maester suggested meals in her room if she felt overwhelmed, Sansa sat in her place for every meal, every day. She attended court when appropriate, despite Stannis assuring her that she should feel excused from her duties until she was delivered of the child. If anyone mentioned her pregnancy during mealtimes, Sansa would smile and stop eating. She would sit, silent as death, until she deemed it within the realm of politeness to return to her chambers.

Even her daily, solitary excursions to the garden stopped once the news got out; inevitably, people tried to talk to her. She accepted their congratulations with a small smile, but at times they would also make to touch her, or touch her belly, and Sansa would sidestep the threat and hurry back to her rooms.  In his council, Stannis ordered that no one should touch the person of the queen; he repeated the order – twice - in court to ensure none would miss it.

He found his attempts to win over Sansa’s trust seemed at times to do more harm than good. He’d sent one of his Kingsguard to request her presence in his solar one morning, thinking to update her on her Jon’s progress following a raven from Winterfell. According to the anxious knight who reported back, Sansa had gone white, then barricaded herself in her chamber and refused to come out. Stannis cursed his thoughtlessness – before being sent to the Wall, the Hound had told him all about Joffrey’s treatment of her – and from then on, he delivered his news to her at mealtimes, or he set a time at which he would knock on her door.

The singing had continued each morning, but it had grown so quiet now that Stannis could only make a note here and there. Cut off from the rest of the song, the snatches of melody seemed to hang in the air and dissipate like sparks floating free of a faraway campfire, but as he sat on the floor of his chamber, body pressed into their connecting door, Stannis picked up every detail he could. The names and characteristics of her lost family members reached him sometimes – Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon and mother and father – and she told the babe all about them, their stories and their characteristics.

Stannis had never heard her speak the name of a single member of her family to him or anyone else, though of course he had not been privy to her conversations with Jon. Her brother sent her ravens on occasion, and Sansa sent ravens back. Stannis did not inquire as to their contents; their conversations were surely not treasonous, so he saw no need to pry.  

Stannis tried, of course, to speak to her. He told her that she had pleased him greatly with the news of her pregnancy, and that he she should feel free to ask the maester or himself for anything she needed. Anything at all. She had given back only an obedient smile which made him far more worried for her than before their ‘talk’. He’s considered holding her, hugging her he supposed, but the locked-up quality of Sansa’s smile stayed his actions.

And thus things continued – Sansa hiding herself away, quietly and in plain sight, and Stannis looking unsuccessfully for a way to comfort his wife - until Roose Bolton arrived in court.

…

Stannis had decreed that all the lords of Westeros should present themselves to their new king to bend the knee in person. No specific time limit had been set – it would be months of travel to King’s Landing from some locations, and many places were busy rebuilding following the war – and lords from the North had been arriving in greater numbers of late. Roose Bolton was among the latest arrivals, and with Roose came his bastard son, Ramsay.

Sansa sat in her usual place in the throne room, as far to the side and in the shadows as she could manage, nowhere near the proximity Cersei had always had to the throne, hidden as far as possible from the hundreds crowded into the hall. Sansa wanted nothing to do with any of it, but even so, in walked Roose Bolton - who had betrayed her brother at the Twins, killing him and her mother and Robb’s pregnant wife – even though Robb had sworn allegiance to Stannis following Blackwater. Here he was, attempting to talk his way out of his betrayal of the North, of House Stark.

Through the sound of her blood racing through her veins and pounding in her head, Sansa could barely make out what her husband was saying to the traitor or he was saying back. As Roose and Ramsay had approached the throne, kneeling before Stannis, she stood unthinkingly from her chair on the sidelines. She noticed Davos looking over at her, tilting his head in concern, but concerned looks were the only kind Davos ever had for her. She noticed her husband glance her way, his scowl deepening. Gods, perhaps Lord Bolton intended to finish the job, spill some poison in her husband’s ear and remove the last true-born Stark from Winterfell’s line of succession.

Unsteady on her feet at nearly eight moons round, Sansa climbed two steps towards the throne to get a better look at the man who had murdered her brother in cold blood. Roose had been speaking when he caught sight of Sansa, and he paused only for a moment before he spoke directly to her. She made out the word: ‘congratulations’.

Sansa walked in a crystal clear daze towards Lord Bolton, blocking all sound and sight that was not him. She stood in front of the throne, her back to Stannis, a few yards from Robb’s killer and his savage-looking bastard. She could vaguely hear both Davos and Stannis speaking to her, but nothing registered. She was ready with the first words she would speak in court since Joffrey’s reign.

“You murdered The King in the North,” she accused, loud and authoritative, “You murdered his wife and his child. You murdered my mother.” Sansa took another step towards Lord Bolton, intending to outline his crimes for the court, when Ramsay made an unexpected and extremely unwise move. He stood from where he knelt, and he curled his hand around a dagger strapped to his breeches. Good, was all Sansa thought as she saw him baring the smallest amount of steel, murder me, too, send me to them so that I will have my family again.

It all happened so fast. Clouded in fear and outrage, Sansa hadn’t realized that the king and his hand had followed her down the steps of the dais. Davos aimed a sword to Lord Bolton’s head, kicking the man to the ground and holding him down with a boot in the back. Stannis gently brushed her behind him, then stepped in front of her before Ramsay could fully unsheathe his weapon. She was standing so close to him that she could feel his muscles tense and flex as he swung Lightbringer through the meat and sinew of Ramsay’s collarbone, hacking him clean in two. Stannis was panting, his face red with rage; Ramsay’s blood was spilling over the marble floor and dripping from his blade. Stannis turned to Lord Bolton, who had been hauled to his feet by two guards, a puddle of piss trailing down his breeches and pooling on the floor by his son’s lifeblood. “House Bolton thinks to threaten my Queen?” Stannis thundered, and the whole of the court shrank back as though chastised.  Sansa could not understand: when Sandor had done the same, Stannis had all but declared that saving her life had not been worth forgoing a trial for Joffrey. 

Stannis roared more words at Roose, but Sansa lost the thread of it again, and then Davos was shouting and Maester Tarly was pushing his way out of the stunned crowd and Stannis had his hands on her arm and waist. He dropped his sword to the tiles with sharp clang. And Sansa closed her eyes.

…

Stannis had ordered everyone from her room but her single handmaiden. Even with Sansa unconscious, he did not wish to invade her privacy more than necessary: he and the maid could remove her heavy dress alone, while Davos and the maester waited in the corridor. When she was down to her shift, he arranged his wife beneath her silk quilts while the maid returned the dress to the wardrobe, then curtsied her departure. He quickly shucked his blood-sodden boots and sat on the bed next to Sansa, stroking her tousled hair back from her face and letting one hand stray to her belly. The mother might have fainted, but his babe was still awake. He felt, for the first time, the kicks and tumbles of his child, safe still in Sansa’s womb.

Entranced, Stannis delayed calling in the maester. Despite his nerves at being caught touching her without explicit permission, he pressed his face to the prominent bulge of Sansa’s middle, and after a few moments, he felt the pressure of a small arm, or leg, or foot against his cheek.

Suddenly, all the happy sounds that he’d overheard from Sansa’s bath made perfect sense; he could no more stop himself smiling than he could hold back the sunrise. He stayed there for as long as he felt he could, struggling against his desire to whisper to the babe.

Stannis knew that his wife had not hit her head; he’d managed to work his arms beneath her as she fainted, breaking her fall and sparing her injury on the hard floor of the throne room. He finally called in Maester Tarly, who touched Sansa as little as possible, just enough to assure Stannis that since she had not injured her head, Sansa would wake on her own and be quite well. Tarly had laid hands over the babe, and Stannis was relieved when she remained unconscious for the whole of the maester’s short examination. Tarly reached the same conclusion that Stannis had, given the babe’s restless movements. The child was fine.

He ordered Tarly to remain outside Sansa’s room and Davos back to court to clean up the literal and figurative mess. He knew that he really ought to accompany Davos, but instead he found himself leaning over his wife, in her bed, pressing a cool cloth to her forehead and waiting nervously for her to wake. He waited only minutes before she blinked awake, looking up at him with startled blue eyes.

“Shhhhh, my wife, you have had a terrible fright. I am sorry that you had to witness that. Can I bring you anything? The maester suggested that you should drink cool tea with a little honey.” He gestured toward the table where a cup was already cooling.  

If feeling his babe move had rendered him temporarily imbecilic with joy, then Sansa’s response did for the rest of his higher intelligence: she asked him for something.

“Your Grace… umm… yes, some water perhaps.” She turned towards him as much as her belly would allow, then tried to lever herself towards a sitting position. Stannis circled his arm beneath her back and helped her to sit up, then held the cup for her as she drank. Assisting Sansa with her drink, having his arms around her and his child, felt like a shaft of light shone through his chest. He wanted to keep giving her things. What might she find appealing? 

He cleared his unsteady throat: “I had Roose Bolton thrown in the cells, and we shall set a trial for this sennight to ajudge his actions towards your family.” Sansa was looking at him over the rim of the water goblet with a curious expression that he’d not seen on her before. He kept going. “I shall remand The Dreadfort to Jon’s possession. He can decide what best to do with the keep; no doubt there are numerous loyal Northern families that he could reward. House Bolton will be no more.”

Sansa rested the goblet on her belly, still watching him with her clear eyes, openly attempting to make up her mind about something. She was leaning against him now, slightly tilted towards his position on the bed.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said finally, carefully. Genuinely. Sansa had thanked him for plenty since he married her, but he had always known the words to be empty courtesies. This one, she meant. Davos would not be impressed by his hasty handing-over of The Dreadfort; Stannis had no idea if more legitimate Bolton claimants existed, but he found he didn’t much care. He would happily execute any who remained. He’d cede Jon the whole of the Twins, too, if it might result in Sansa gifting him a smile.

Instead, she shifted a bit away from him and let herself be propped up by pillows and the headboard of her bed. That curious look was back. Reaching over to the bedside table, Stannis cradled her teacup to his palm and then offered it to her. She reached for it and took a cautious sip.

“Maester Tarly has a generous definition of a ‘little’ honey,” she said, “But I approve his recipe. Would you please convey my thanks?”

He may not have spent a lot of time around women, but Stannis could recognise a polite dismissal when he was faced with one. “Of course, my lady. The maester will be at your disposal for the night. Might he stop by in an hour to check on your condition?” She nodded her assent. “Then I shall take my leave of you.” Stannis hovered awkwardly for a moment, then chanced a press of his lips against her forehead.

With his hand on the door to the corridor, Stannis paused. He wasn’t sure if he should ask, as he wasn’t sure that asking would produce usable information. But Davos had asked him the question, and Stannis found that he wanted an answer.

He turned back and made sure to pay particular attention to her reaction. “My lady,” he said plainly, “Do you trust me?”

Sansa’s face betrayed nothing beyond a quick blink so that she could process the question. “Yes,” she replied immediately, nodding solemnly. Stannis gave her a quick nod in return, and he let himself out.

Stannis had definitely been long enough at court to know a polite lie when he heard it, too. Davos had been right; Sansa did not trust him. As if to underscore his insight, he heard the lock click behind him. She would apparently not be admitting the maester, either.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, I've been a long way from internet access.

Sansa had expected to be thrown in the cells. When she’d woken from her faint in the throne room, warm and comfortable in her own bed, her husband beside her and looking concerned rather than furious… she did not quite know what to make of it. Perhaps rather than keeping her alive in the cells until the child’s birth, he adjudged it safer for the pregnancy to keep her confined to her rooms? He might still take her head as soon as the babe was free of her traitorous womb.

But then there had been the tea, and the honey, and the unfathomable question of trust. Why would he want her trust? What did he have to gain by it? She could not puzzle out the man.

…

Beheading? Drawing and quartering? A simple dagger to his heart, Stannis mused to himself, watching Axell Florent go yellowish-red with the fervour of his denunciation of Sansa. But then again, Florent’s heart must be so small that a dagger would struggle to make contact. Suffocation? Drowning…

“Your Grace was establishing the facts of the Red Wedding when the Queen made her accusations. Could she not hear that you were investigating the murder of her brother and mother? That girl has no respect for Your Grace’s authority or that of this council…”

“That _girl_ is your Queen, Ser Axell,” Davos reminded him.

“Nevertheless. She had no right to confront Lord Bolton in such a manner. His bastard already felt threatened in facing the scrutiny of this court, and thus the boy lashed out without thinking. Ramsay has paid with his life, and Lord Bolton has paid the price for offending the Queen,” Florent finished with a fierce nod.  

“Because they have offended the Queen?” Stannis growled. “Roose Bolton did not _offend_ my wife, ser. He murdered her mother, brother and unborn niece or nephew in cold blood, with a view to wiping out the Stark line and taking Winterfell as the Bolton stronghold. Robb Stark had sworn allegiance to me, as did his father before him. Why should I not, as recompense, hand the Dreadfort to the Starks?”

“You cannot just hand over a keep and lands to your wife’s family!” Florent pushed, red-faced. “Lord Bolton has a wife with claim to the lands…”

“Ser Axell, who in the seven hells are you to tell me what I can and cannot do? I will punish the traitorous Boltons by taking their lives and their lands, and if you think to slander the Queen by words or deeds, Ser, I shall consider you a threat to my kingdom, as well,” he snapped.

As Davos ushered Florent out the door, Stannis realised he would need to quash such thinking in court, as well. He would address the situation tomorrow. He would not allow Florent to question his Queen; his council must learn that his bride was to be obeyed, and that fomenting distrust of the Queen would be just as serious a treason as doing so against himself.

"So Davos," he said when his Hand returned, "Now for the Freys." 

…

The final moons of her pregnancy seemed to pass like thick honey from a spoon, slow and heavy and ponderous. She kept strictly to herself and avoided the maester’s attempts at friendly interaction. Jon had written to her to assure her of Sam Tarly’s good intentions, but she could tell that the letter had been sent at the maester’s request, part of his plan to ingratiate himself with her. Littlefinger had tried similar tactics, though he was thankfully long gone, hidden in the Vale.

Anyway, Sansa did not want friends; she didn’t want to tell anyone her story; she didn’t want to hear theirs. She’d had friends and family, and now they were gone, and they could not be replaced like a pair of lost slippers. She had her memories, and soon she would have her own child. Even if it was a boy, she reasoned, she would have some years with him, before people more powerful than her decided his fate and sent him away to be fostered. Perhaps he could foster at Winterfell, with Jon. She patted her belly and promised to try.

Stannis visited her room from time to time still, not to exercise his rights anymore, but to check on the well-being of his heir. He would lay a hand to her belly most times, and the feeling of the babe moving seemed to reassure him. He spoke to her about the business of the kingdom, told her of the frustrating squabbles at court, and he tried to draw out opinions that she refused to offer. When she grew tired, he would lay in the bed next to her, clad in his breeches and tunic and fully-fastened doublet, and wait for her to fall asleep. At every visit, he gifted her with different sweets from all over Westeros and the east; more advice from Jon, she assumed, who would have remembered her sweet tooth. Stannis never brought lemon cakes, though, and she never told him that she liked them best. Jon must have forgotten that detail.

The series of kindly midwives that Stannis sent to chat with her were turned away from her door with a polite smile and some coin. Gods only knew who those women were connected to, and who they might speak to after leaving her chamber. Varys still had ears everywhere; Littlefinger would be hungry for news of her. No good came from trusting strangers in this castle; she would do this by herself.

…

Sometimes, she let him stay. He would visit her every night he could spare, and he could see that she was tired and uncomfortable.  She would yawn and stretch, rub her lower back or roll her shoulders, and Stannis wished that he could touch her, rub the ache from her muscles. After all, she had borne his attentions gladly enough in making the babe; if only she would accept his touch now that she was struggling to find a position that allowed her to sleep uninterrupted. She was so young, and would admit neither maester nor midwife to attend her, but he could see in the dark circles beneath her eyes and her slow, premeditated movements that she needed help. For better or worse, he was the only person that she would allow anywhere close. He knew that this was only because she could not refuse her King.

Stannis would admit that cold calculation had been the only notion behind marrying Sansa. He had been planning the Battle of Blackwater for months, nonstop, preparing his troops, laying the groundwork of his strategy, gathering information from inside the Red Keep. Selyse had died before he’d managed to secure the crown to his head, and when he saw Sansa, covered in the usurper’s blood and cowering in her brother’s arms, he admitted that his only immediate thoughts were strategic rather than romantic. Jon had played a major part in his victory; Robb had secured the Riverlands and the Crossing in his name, and the North had come forth to support Stannis without question.

So he had married the North. A pretty girl, to be sure, young and – he’d hoped – fertile. But Stannis would not lie to himself despite more recent events: the marriage had been political.

Therefore, nothing had prepared him for the warm reality of Sansa. When he’d finally bedded her, she’d been soft and yielding and something far more enticing: thoroughly aroused. Stannis was not Robert, but no man could live in proximity to Robert and not learn a few pertinent facts about sex. When he kissed Sansa deeply and skimmed his hands beneath her shift, stroked her breasts, let his fingers play between her legs, she wanted him. She never spoke at all, but she was hardly silent, though perhaps she was unaware that she made any noise. Sansa sighed when he undid the laces of her shift and licked across her nipples, she squirmed and panted and moaned when he dipped his fingers into her wetness and rubbed circles around her nub. She arched her back when he entered her and she shuddered in pleasure when he moved over her, whining a high-pitched tone of approval when pressed against a spot that made her come, her long legs wrapped tightly around his waist to keep him close until he came, too.

Stannis had not expected any of it. And he was addicted. It had been all her could do not to chain her to his bed and order Davos to run the country on his behalf while he fucked his wife nonstop.

Now, he waited until she slept, and when she rolled to one side in discomfort, he slid a hand to the base of her back and rubbed circles for a different purpose. She sighed in gratitude even in her slumber as he eased the pain from her overburdened bones.

…

Apparently, she had been staring into her full cup of tea, too lost in thought to drink it, for longer than her husband could tolerate. He cleared his throat and to bring her back to the present, and she lifted her head to take in the scene of courtiers and servants and guards moving through the echoing space. As she emerged from the quiet of her imaginings, the clatter and chatter of the Great Hall flooded back into her ears. Stannis was watching her with an intense, dark blue gaze. She knew enough of him by now to know that he did not intend it to intimidate her, but it had that effect all the same.

“Is the tea not to your liking, my lady?” He’d given up trying to get her to finish her meals, when after significant duress she had explained that the babe took up so much space now that she could only tolerate small amounts of food at once. She enjoyed the snacks of cheese and fruit that the kitchens were now sending up twice daily between meals.

“The tea?” Sansa refocussed on the object she had her hands wrapped round. Tea with lashings of honey. “Oh, I…” She was going to say that yes, it was fine, but something about his expression softened. She thought of the way he kept finding excuses to visit her room, of the kisses he’d sometimes press to her hands or face, and she found herself admitting instead: “I prefer it with lemon as well as honey.” Stannis’s eyes widened with shock for a moment, before he recovered himself. Dipping his fingers into the goblet of water before him, he fished out a slice of lemon and slipped it into her teacup.

She thanked him and drank her tea, and he kept his eyes on her for every swallow. She’d forgotten quite how much she liked lemon, not having tasted one for over a year. She couldn’t be certain, but she may have smiled to herself. Beside her, her husband stopped breathing.

…

Stannis near ran to the kitchens himself after the meal, and his sudden appearance caused everyone from cook downwards to drop into a low bow at the shock of the sight of him. “Lemons,” he boomed at the cook.

The man nodded frantically. “Yes, Your Grace?” The stilled kitchen staff raised their heads slightly to better listen.

“The Queen should have lemon with her tea,” he continued. Everyone nodded as one body. Stannis turned to leave, but then a thought struck him. He knew that she liked sweet things, and he knew that she liked lemons. He swung back to face the flustered cook: “Can you make lemon-infused sweets?” he demanded.

“Of course, of course we can, Your Grace,” the cook stammered.

“I expect such in front of the Queen at tonight’s meal, then.” As Stannis strode from the kitchen again, satisfied that his order would be heeded, he heard a voice among the mumblings at the back of the kitchen: “Didn’t Lady Sansa always like lemon cakes?”

Sansa’s expression at the next meal made Stannis want to invade Dorne and collect every lemon grown there.

…

Stannis rode out to Storm’s End the next week. He had been unwilling to go, with the Queen’s time drawing close, but a situation had developed that required his immediate attention, and Davos could oversee affairs for the two nights required to make Shipbreaker’s Bay and return.

No sooner had Stannis’ ship disappeared over the horizon than Maester Tarly appeared with a sealed scroll fresh from the rookery. It bore the unbroken seal of the Warden of the North and in his spartan, elegant script: Her Grace Sansa of House Baratheon. He scrawled off a quick note to the queen and sent a boy scurrying away to deliver it to her handmaiden.

Davos had not expected the Queen to arrive at the office the Hand at all, and she walked awkwardly now, her belly suddenly prominent beneath a soft, Stark-grey gown. He looked up sharply from the round table where he was working with two young clerks, piles of parchment stacked neatly in front of each of them, but his expression morphed into a wide grin as soon as he recognised who his visitor was.

“My Queen,” he stood and greeted her, shooing the young men from their places and out the door. “I did not intend to impose upon you; I would have brought the letter to you at your convenience. Are you well?”

“Quite well, my Lord Hand,” she replied softly, shifting her swollen feet in discomfort. He pushed a cushioned chair near the window and bade her sit, imagining Marya scolding him for causing a heavily pregnant woman to stand longer than necessary. “I understand you have had a letter for me from my brother?”

“Indeed,” he pulled the scroll from a locked box on his desk and handed it to her, she bobbed a curtsey that lacked all stability and left with her brother’s words clutched in her hand. Davos had just called back the clerks and settled into calculating the grain stores in the Riverlands when the guards threw open the doors in a rush that made him reach behind him for his sword. The Queen waddled in as quickly as she could move, breathing heavily and eyes wide.

“My Queen, please, let me assist you,” Davos snapped into action, taking her elbow, while one of the clerks fetched a cup of sweet wine and the other pushed the cushioned chair closer to her.

“My Lord Hand…” he helped her ease into the chair as she struggled for breath, “I must needs speak with you.” Her eyes roved between the two clerks, staring dumbstruck at their monarch. Davos rushed them out of the room and closed the doors. “My brother…”

“Lord Stark?” Davos prompted, dropping into the chair before her. 

“No, not Jon… oh,” she heaved a breath, “this is most unexpected, My Lord, but Rickon, my youngest brother Rickon, has been found. He is alive, My Lord! He is currently in the care of the Umbers at Last Hearth.” She paused to swipe tears from her face. “And Bran has returned to Winterfell all of his own!”

“What joyful news, Your Grace!” Davos smiled warmly.  “Has Lord Stark gone to collect Rickon?”

“Yes,” she replied and then hesitated.

“My Queen?” Davos asked. She wanted to ask something, he could tell. But this girl did not trust him, probably still did not trust her infatuated husband. He wished he could explain it to her, that he’d never seen Stannis Baratheon smile with true happiness before his marriage, that the furrow in the King’s brow was caused less often by Stannis’ brand of righteous indignation and more often by concern for his wife.

“It’s only…” she looked down at her hands atop her belly and then out the window.

“My Queen, if you wish to command something of me, please know that it is entirely in your power to do so. The king has ordered that any requests or instructions from you are to be carried out immediately,” Davos confirmed.

She contemplated that with a frown.

“Your Grace, if you wished the whole of the Kingsguard to leap from the walls into Blackwater Bay, the King would station himself at the parapet to push them in.” Sansa could not help a small smile at the ridiculous image. Stannis would be jealous of that little smile, he knew. He mentally excised it from the report he would give to his King on his return.

Sansa shook her head and stared at the floor. She used her arms to lift herself from the deep chair, and let herself out the room without a word. Whatever she had wished to ask, she did not trust enough to ask it.

…

Sam broke the seal on the letter as soon as the raven’s feet touched his desk. He’d trained this one to fly directly to him rather than to the rookery; this raven’s messages came only from Jon. This one was typically blunt: A short and exultant explanation that his two younger brothers were alive and well. A plea for Sam to continue to coax Sansa from her sadness and isolation ( _She needs a friend, Sam, have you introduced her to Gilly?_ ) and finally some more probing about what Jon feared to be the root cause of Sansa’s unhappiness: _Your description of Sansa did not include her husband. How does he behave with her?_

As it happened, just that morning Sam had overseen the planting of Sansa’s preferred scent-flowers in a new garden beneath her window, on the King’s personal command, an attempt to entice her to open her window to the sunshine and air. So Sam had no trouble answering: _He loves her._

…

Sansa didn’t sing in the bath the next morning, too wound up in the thoughts that Davos had stirred in her head to find the words. What should she ask for? What did she dare? Stannis was pleased with her now, alright, she could believe that. He wanted her healthy and well so that he could have a herd of little stags to run his kingdom after him.

Upon his return from Storm’s End, Stannis had acknowledged the happy news of Rickon and Bran’s return. Perhaps briefed by Davos, he’d once again tried to coax from her desire to have Rickon with her at King’s Landing, and once again, she’d kept her counsel.

What did she want? Sansa sighed, once she ruled out the impossible – her father, Robb and mother alive; herself back at Winterfell – she wanted Rickon. She wanted so badly to have him here with her, where she could stroke his mussed curls and kiss his dirty face and make him feel like mother once had, safe and secure. But Sansa didn’t feel safe or secure here herself, so far from her pack, and no doubt Jon would be best for her brother. She could not put her own desires before her brother’s safety.

She wanted to go home to Winterfell.

She wanted Arya found and returned safely to the North.

She wanted Sandor freed from the Wall.

She wanted Littlefinger dead, along with every living Frey.

She wanted to name her firstborn for her father, and not whatever family name of Stannis’ would take precedence.

She wanted to be loved and cherished for herself.

But no matter. Her own life may be forfeit to a warrior king who’d wed her before all the blood could be cleaned from the streets, but she felt certain her children would be safe here. And if she was allowed to live long enough, she would shower her children with all the love she had in her heart.  Stannis was no Joffrey, she did understand that, and perhaps, he’d not harm her, and she would be able to love her children for many years to come. Hope was volatile, and Sansa wondered at how her husband seemed to inspire the dangerous feeling.

She would work harder not to allow him to dull her wariness.  

…

This time, she locked and barred both doors.

The pain came and went at intervals, and Sansa had the measure of it now. The periods of rest grew shorter, the pains longer and stronger, and she imagined that perhaps it would be all pain and no rest at the end. She had not been able to ask anyone about childbirth without raising rumours and suspicion, or inviting unwanted advice or attention. Instead, she tried to remember what she had gleaned from her mother and her septa and other women she had known in Winterfell and King’s Landing. It was distressingly little to go on.  

Sansa could still walk, though, and she could still reach the pitcher of water, the clean linens she’d stacked away, the sweet-smelling dried herbs and flowers she’d secreted into her drawers to keep her sane. She crushed them into the water of the basin, and when the pain receded, she splashed cool, sweet water over her face and neck and arms. She stomped around her chamber, stopping to clutch the bedposts for support whenever she had to. But she’d stumbled a bit on her last tour of the room, and she knew that she was growing tired.

She must have missed the morning meal by now, for she could see through the shutters that the sun had risen. Damn it, she would be missed, her absence noted, rumours spread, and likely someone would be sent to her chambers. That maester, perhaps, the one who tried to use his connection to Jon to gain her trust. As though no one had thought before to use her family to get to her, she huffed to herself. He must think her as stupid as she pretended to be, to think she’d fall for that. She had no idea how she’d made it through lunch and dinner yesterday, but the pains had been irregular then and not nearly so strong. With a huff of breath, she supposed it was a minor miracle that she had made it this far without interference.

The important thing was not to cry out, not to scream. Any noise would alert the guards, and the guards would alert her husband. Exhausted now, she began to feel the beginnings of panic; her father had told stories of her mother giving birth to her, how she had laboured for two days straight, how he had finally entered the birthing room himself to hold her through the final hours. Perhaps she could not make it alone; perhaps she would die from the exhaustion.

As the next pain seized across her belly, she grabbed a pillow and stifled back a whimper, then panted heavily until it wound down. She moved quickly to the basin, for another splash of water, then leaned her head against the bedpost again as the next wave gripped hold. Using every scrap of attention and energy to hold on and not cry out, she missed the sound as the bar across the door to Stannis’ room cracked open and then snapped clean in two.

…

His wife looked like she had been battling a contingent of sellswords, on her own, for a week; her skin pale and her posture hunched and near-defeated; her fingers were white with effort as she dug them into the bedpost for support; she gasped for each breath. Her shift was sleeveless, and he could see every muscle in her arms tensed to keep herself upright. The hair around her face and the front of her gown were wet; he saw water sloshed onto the floor around her basin.

Above all, she looked frightened half to death, whether of him breaking into her private sanctum at such an intensely private moment, or of childbirth itself, he could not immediately tell. Then her arms and shoulders seemed to sag of an instant, the pain seemed to drop her from its grip, and she let loose a sob echoed off the stone walls of her room. “Stannis,” she cried, reaching out for him and nearly stumbling in the process.

To the best of his knowledge, it was the first time his wife had ever spoken his given name, and that included the consummation and all subsequent couplings.

He ducked his head out the connecting door and shouted at the guards to fetch Maester Tarly, then rushed back inside to Sansa. She threw herself at him, the pain taking hold of her again. Her hands clawed into his arms, digging into his skin to hold herself up as she gulped in great lungfuls of air in a panic. Stannis wrapped his arms under hers and around her back, and she pressed her flushed face into his chest. He rubbed circles into her back, just as he’d wanted to do all those weeks ago, and flexed every muscle in his arms and torso to hold her upright as she fought through another wave of pain. As it faded, she sank into his body and cried.

“Sansa,” he began, guessing that they may as well dispense with formal titles for the present, “would you be more comfortable on the bed?”

“No!” she yelled into his stiff doublet, “Not the bed!”, and he noticed that she was trying to rub her face back and forth across the unyielding leather. He managed to rip it from his body before the next pain began, drawing her closer into the soft linen of his tunic. “I’m so tired,” she murmured with a hiccoughed sob as the pain slackened again.

He wanted to yell at her. Why hadn’t she called for help? Why hadn’t she told anyone? Didn’t she realise the risk she was taking with herself and the babe? But he pushed the anger aside; he should have been watching more closely. _Isolated_ , Davos had named her. Stannis held his distressed, suffering wife and thought that isolated didn’t come fucking close.

By the time Tarly arrived, wheezing from his rush up the stairs of the keep, Stannis had backed himself onto a wall to help absorb Sansa’s weight. He’d managed to get hold of a cloth and dip it in a basin of cool water that Sansa had filled earlier with dried flowers. He patted her overheated skin with the wet, perfumed cloth whenever the pain eased back for a few blessed moments, and he stroked her hair and massaged his fingers into her shoulders and back.

“Your Grace!” Tarly blurted from where he leaned on the doorframe, huffing and puffing. “Your Grace may leave… I shall call for a midwife and the Queen’s handmaiden…”

Both Stannis’s angry response and Sansa’s first true scream drown out the rest of the maester’s misguided words. Stannis dropped his face to the top of her head. “Shhhh… wife, know that I shall not leave you unless you order it so.” He pulled her more tightly to him and looked up at Tarly. He knew his wife by now, and she was not in a position to state her own wants, so he’d have to do it for her.

“No midwives, no handmaid, no one else enters this room. You and I will deliver her of this child. Now tell me how she fares,” Stannis ground out.

And thus it continued, for hours and hours, Sansa near incoherent with agony and exhaustion, though Tarly proved reassuring and cheering, telling her often how well her labour progressed, offering her sips of water laced with honey and lemon. He had the windows thrown open for fresh air, and at long last Sansa accepted sitting in the bed with Stannis behind her, her head tucked against his collarbone as Tarly encouraged her to push the babe forth. Her hands gripped both of his as she brought all her remaining strength to the task.

Sansa had been fairly quiet until this point, but once the pushing began, her screams echoed off the walls and shattered his heart into several pieces. Boy or girl, he swore, this child would suffice. He’d never touch her again. Ever. This is why men were not supposed to be in the birthing room. Why hadn’t he insisted upon a midwife?

Then, on a pause, Sansa turned and looked up at him with bright, watery blue eyes and with such… trust. She gripped his hands hard and pushed her forehead under his chin and fought and pushed and screamed in pain. And Stannis swore that he would be right here behind her for the next child, and the next, and they would never need a midwife.

And then. And then. Sansa was laughing into his neck, sagging in relief, and Tarly was balancing a little black-haired child in his hands, as blood pooled onto the bedclothes. Suddenly Stannis was holding a blinking infant in one arm and Sansa in the other as she collapsed against his chest. She smiled down onto the little face, the babe’s Tully blue eyes searching for his mother’s and finding only Stannis’s above his little head. _His_ little head. A boy, very obviously from Stannis’s vantage point. A son. He blinked back at the babe, similarly lost for words. The boy was not crying, just calmly surveying him and his mother.

Tarly was mopping up blood and sweat and all matter of horror and patting Sansa’s thigh to keep her still; she yet needed to deliver the afterbirth. Stannis eased the child into her arms, and she breathed out a sigh of pure happiness, tracing his little cheeks and ears with a light touch, stroking his feet and toes. Stannis reached out his finger and laid it against the palm of his son’s tiny hand, and the boy’s fingers closed tight around Stannis’ finger. Sansa giggled.

“He’s more beautiful even than Rickon was,” she smiled, “And we all agreed that Rickon was the most gorgeous babe out of all of us.”

Stannis pressed a kiss to his wife’s sweaty forehead. “Thank you, Sansa. He is perfect.” Stannis trailed off, his eyes flitting in concern to the maester, and the blood. He had no idea how much blood was normal in childbirth. But Tarly did not seem concerned, and the man was incapable of hiding an emotion on that round face of his.

“Maester Tarly, how fares my wife?”

“The Queen is completely well, Your Grace, and she should recover from the birth, given plenty of time and rest. I shall send for a wet nurse,” he nodded.

“No!” Sansa looked up at Stannis, suddenly panicked. “Please, Sta…  please, Your Grace. Please, no one else should touch him. I couldn’t bear it. I will feed him myself, clean him, everything… please, please…”

Stannis brushed back his wife’s wild hair with his hand. “Sansa, the wet nurse will mean no harm to the boy; I can interrogate her myself first, if you prefer. She could take the child so that you can rest. Maester Tarly is correct that you must sleep after this ordeal, regain your strength.”

Sansa clutched the infant tighter to her chest and shook her head violently. “No! Please, Your Grace, do not take him from me! No one else…” she was starting to sob, and her words became garbled, “I don’t need to sleep. I can stay awake for him.” His wife was shrinking further from him. He could feel all the trusting closeness he’d built up over the last hours melting away, and he desperately wanted to do what was best for her. She had to sleep, that much was clear. The babe was beginning to fuss, no doubt hungry and picking up on his mother’s distress.

“But, Sansa, you need to rest. You have been awake for two days. I will not let any harm come to our son,” he soothed.

Her head sank in defeat and her tears dripped onto the babe’s belly. She held him close to her face and whispered low, but Stannis had grown used to listening to Sansa’s quiet voice. “I’m sorry, Ned, I’m sorry. I promised, and I tried, but I can’t.” She kept talking to their son, but the water in her voice made it impossible even for Stannis to hear more. But he’d already heard enough. _Ned_. Eddard Baratheon. It was a strong name of good pedigree, a good name for a crown prince.

Stannis cleared his throat. “Maester Tarly, there will be no need for a wet nurse. The Queen shall feed the boy herself.” Stannis could see that Tarly had somehow managed to clean up the worst of the blood and replaced the bed linens. “If you judge that the Queen’s health is in no danger, you may leave us. Please have food and fresh water sent up. And lemon tea for the Queen.”

Tarly stood, beaming at Sansa, and offered cheery congratulations. “Should I send word to Winterfell, my Queen?”

Sansa looked up, startled, and thought it over. “Yes, please… Sam. I should like Jon to know.”

Maester Tarly smiled even more broadly, and he promised to return within the hour to check on the Queen.

With the door closed behind the maester, Sansa seemed to collapse with exhaustion. Stannis eased her down onto the pillows and rocked his now-sleeping son in his arms. “Please, Sansa, sleep for a bit. I swear upon my life and kingdom, no one but I shall hold our son until you wake.” She seemed satisfied with that answer and let her head drop back onto the pillow. And, finally, she slept.


	4. Chapter 4

When, after nearly three weeks, Sansa nervously allowed Davos to hold Ned, Stannis knew that some of his wife’s trauma had loosened its hold on her mind. She only lasted about a minute, holding her arms out impatiently for the babe, but that minute proved the start of Sansa’s reintroduction to society, even if only a limited society.

Stannis had been slowly chipping away at Sansa’s reticence, first having Marya and Gilly walk with her in the gardens or join her in sewing. Then she began allowing Sam into her chambers if Stannis accompanied him, then she relented and let Sam tell her stories of Jon, and finally she began calling for Sam if she required help or wanted to send a letter to her brothers.

This evening, he found his wife curled up on her bed, Ned stretched across her lap, drinking contentedly from her breast. She had never shied away from Stannis in this, and usually he would remove his boots and doublet and settle himself next to her on the bed, stroking the growing thatch of thick, black hair on his son’s head.  But tonight he hefted a package into the room with him and stood next to the bed, waiting for Ned to finish his meal and for Sansa to set herself to rights.

“Stannis?” she questioned, tilting her face up for a kiss. He obliged, then went back to standing awkwardly next to her. “Is something amiss?”

“My lady, when you told me about the babe, I commissioned a gift to be made for you. For the two of you.” Gods, he felt nervous, of all things, as he handed over the heavy package in its ornate, painted paper and silk ribbon, and he took Ned from her in exchange. She nearly dropped the present, underestimating its weight, and it took up the whole of her lap and both hands. He rocked the babe with a casual confidence, a movement remembered from Shireen’s infancy and developed over the last few months, as Sansa would allow only a select few to hold their babe. Sansa looked several times from the large gift to him, and back again. “You’ll need to open it, my lady,” he encouraged.

His words seemed to snap her out of her surprise, and she pulled open the ribbons and paper to reveal the leather-bound, gold-inscripted book that had taken up every working hour of every chained and training maester and every apprentice and septa in Old Town for nearly half a year.  The illuminated manuscript presented the great epic and romantic tales that Sansa had sung to their boy before his birth. The frontispiece celebrating the birth of the prince had been etched into the page with molten gold, his name added in scrolling script by the grand maester himself once it was announced to the kingdom the day following the birth. Stannis had ordered the book delivered from Old Town by riders moving nonstop in sequence, so that Sansa could have it on the two-moon anniversary of Ned’s birth, which coincided with her own nameday.

He hoped that she liked it.

“Oh.” She drew in a breath. “Oh. Stannis.” Opening the book at random, she ran a finger over the depiction of Aemon the Dragonknight, picked out in glittering greys and blues and silvers. He looked like Robb. So much like Robb that it couldn’t have been a coincidence: dark red curls, clear blue eyes, his heavy brow and stoic expression. She caught her tears before they could mar the priceless page, wiping them away with her fingertips. Wiping her wet fingers on her nightdress, Sansa gingerly closed the book and lay it to one side. She held out her hand to Stannis, to balance herself against him and lift out of bed. “Stannis. This is the most wonderful thing anyone has ever given me, apart from Ned himself. And you gave him to me, too.” She leaned up on her toes and pressed a kiss to her husband’s lips. Awakened by the movement, Ned opened his sleepy eyes and smiled at his father.

“May I ask a favour of you, Your Grace?” she smiled at him, too.

“You may ask anything of me, my Queen.”

“Would you perhaps read to us? Please?”

Sansa scooted over to the middle of her large bed, propping Ned on her chest, facing outwards. Stannis slipped under the silk blankets with them, close enough for he and Sansa to hold the shared book across their laps. Ned kicked his legs and grinned, chewed his fingers and watched intently and his father leaned into Sansa’s space to read from the tale of Florian and Jonquil.

Shireen arrived a few minutes later for her daily visit with Sansa, and Sansa waved her over with a sedate smile and an invitation to hear some of the stories. The girl settled next to Sansa, and Ned turned his attentions to his sister, babbling excited little noises at her. Stannis spent over an hour reading to them, and no one noticed the time passing.

…

Ned was four moons of age before Sansa gave up on all hope that her husband would return to her bed on his own terms. So for the first time, she took advantage of the unbarred connecting door, and she knocked hesitantly at it. “Sansa?” he’d asked, confused, when he’d opened the door to find her standing in her shift, looking half-guilty and half-exasperated. Stannis looked so surprised to see her that she turned to look behind her. Who else could he possibly have been expecting?

Rather than explaining to him that she’d been starting to doubt his feelings, starting to wonder if perhaps now that he had a son, he’d no longer touch her, and starting to remember with palpable fondness his past attentions in bed; rather than go into any of that, Sansa simply went up on her tiptoes, took hold of the back of his neck and kissed him. When she pulled back, Stannis stood still, staring hard at her with an unreadable expression. Then, he grabbed hold of her with both hands, one stroking her breast and the other bunching up the fabric of her shift before skimming over the bare skin of her hip. He bundled her into his bed, the weight of his body pressing her into the mattress, both of them desperately kissing and touching; she was wet and slick before he’d even worked his fingers beneath the ribboned edge of her smallclothes. Even after they’d both peaked within moments of Stannis pushing into her body, he kept kissing her and trailing his hands along her hips.  

“I shouldn’t have done that,” he sighed into her hair eventually. She pulled back to look on his face, his deep blue eyes tinged with guilt.

“Why not? We have not done anything improper, have we? We are married.”

“It is my first duty to keep you and the children that I already have safe and well,” he explained. “Maester Tarly disapproves of pregnancies following too quickly one after the other. He has suggested a gap of at least a year before we once again attempt to conceive a babe.”

“A year!” Sansa interjected. “You mean, he expected you to wait for a year before we…” She let the sentence trail off, as Stannis was shifting nervously.

“I did not think you would oppose his plan, my lady. I would not wish to impose upon you, especially if the maester judged it best for your health to wait.”

“Impose…” Sansa frowned at her husband. Should she try to explain to him that did not consider his affections to be any sort of imposition? She herself had not lasted past four months before knocking rather brazenly on his door. And she liked this, right now, just relaxing in his bed, resting her head against his chest and listening to the sound of his voice.

Perhaps, though, Stannis had understood something of her meaning. “Tarly did not actually suggest waiting, Sansa,” he continued haltingly, trying to guess at her reaction with each word. “He said that he could mix up a reasonably effective tea that would prevent a child from taking root before such time as we are ready.”

Sansa sat up in the bed, and Stannis’ eyes followed her breasts before finally struggling up to meet her troubled eyes. “My lord, it is treason to try to prevent the king from conceiving an heir.”

Perplexed, Stannis propped his head on his hand to better look at her. “I do not think, Sansa, that it is possible for me to commit treason against myself.”

“No, Your Grace, but you could accuse me. Even if you agreed now, you could change your mind about me and then…” Sansa stopped talking. Her husband’s eyes had narrowed to slits and his jaw clenched tight to keep back a tide of harsh words. She could scarce believe she had voiced that thought aloud, and in front of him, and in his bed of all places.

“You think me capable of such an act, wife?” he finally ground out. He sat up in bed and put his hands on both of her shoulders, forcing her to turn to face him square-on. “You must believe that I have no honour, no sense of duty to my wife and to the mother of the prince, to my realm of which you alone are queen.” Sansa shuddered; she was naked in front of him, and he was growing angry with her thoughtless words. But when he saw the startled fear in her eyes, Stannis relaxed his rigid posture and let his hands skim down her arms to take her hands.

“Sansa, you must know how much I care for you,” he confessed awkwardly. Sansa felt her heart race away. “I wouldn’t hurt you, never. But not out of some changeable sense of duty to the realm. I would never hurt _you_ , Sansa. Please believe me that I would rather die than hurt you.”

Sansa wasted not one more moment on her fear of this man. She threw her arms around him and when she felt his hands at her back, pulling her close, she grinned into his bare shoulder. Eight more months be damned, she did not want to wait another eight minutes or spend another eight seconds being scared of… of what? He wasn’t looking to betray her, or beat her, or turn on her. The maester wasn’t going to poison her or tell her secrets to the gossips at court. Davos was not seeking to replace her with someone more loyal to his house or his relatives.

Keeping hold of his hands, Sansa let herself fall back onto the soft bedclothes. She smiled up at him, and he smiled back, one of his real smiles, where the corners of his eyes went crinkly and the blue of his irises seemed to almost sparkle. “Come here, then, husband. If the maester can brew up moon tea, then there’s no need for us to wait, is there?”

That night, Sansa stayed on in Stannis’s bed, rising only briefly in the early hours to feed Ned and settle him back down to his slumber, all accomplished while the king snored lightly into his pillow, chest down and face snuffled into the crook of one arm. She smiled to herself at how both Ned and Stannis seemed to sleep in exactly the same position, and she let a happy laugh escape before she could stifle it back.

…

Davos ran the country – every council meeting, every shipment of grain and weaponry to the Wall, every argument with the great lords over their contributions to the Crown - all the while that Stannis was away. If he rarely slept, if the work aged him, if he rarely saw his own sons or his wife, none of the mattered when the kingdom was in dire peril. He would do all he could.

He had not expected the Queen to do anything, really, other than attend court at mealtimes and be the royal presence in King’s Landing. But from the morning Stannis left, the Queen had sat every day in the Great Hall, in a smaller golden chair to the right of Stannis’s empty throne, one hand touching the armrest that Stannis used to grip in irritation and pound to make a point. She heard the petitioners in Stannis’ stead.  Every hour or two, should would halt proceedings so that she could feed the second prince, born just a moon before Stannis sailed North. In the beginning, Sansa smiled sympathetically and nodded in the correct places, all the while letting Davos, standing to her right, suggest a sound course of action.  

But as the War for the Dawn dragged on, Sansa began issuing minor judgements without waiting for the Hand of the King to whisper his thoughts in her ear. When courtiers grumbled, Sansa reminded the court of exactly what was at stake, that her own husband and brother were at the front, risking their lives daily, living in fetid, freezing conditions. Davos stood slightly further back as the months passed, and he couldn’t help the proud smile on his face as the Queen took a greater and greater part in the running of the kingdom. She consulted Sam without hesitation when his learning and wide reading could shed light on a problem.

The scared little girl who could barely speak had all but disappeared.

…  

She missed her husband. She was well used to missing people – her mother, her father, Robb – and the siblings she had not seen since childhood. But it still ached when her youngest moved on from milk to porridge to bread, from crying to babbling to pointing to Stannis’s side of the bed and questioning, “Papa at war?” Ned didn’t remember his father, either, too young when Jon had sent that frantic raven, asking Stannis for troops, for weapons made of dragonglass, for ships and for wildfire. So Ned turned four, and Steffon turned two, and Sansa prayed every night in both the sept and the godswood for her brother and her husband to return home.

Rickon, sent south by Jon at the start of the war with a small host of refugees from Winterfell, shadowed Davos by day and ran through the hallways at night, terrorising the servants with his direwolf and his apparent ability to survive quite nicely on only a couple of hours of sleep per night. But Davos was used to taming wild boys, and Marya better at it still, and Sam was devoted to Rickon’s learning, so before her little brother could convert Ned and Steffon to his ways, they’d made a young lord of him.

It was Rickon who ran to call her back from her prayers in the godswood just past dawn in the newly emergent spring. Forgetting every propriety he’d been taught, he shouted and jumped and stomped and cursed, heedless of the sacred ground on which they stood, too overwrought to find words, so dragged her roughly from the small wood and over to walkway by the cliff’s edge. In the harbour, already tied to the docks, was Stannis’s ship, the black and gold sails weathered and split, the formerly clean lines of the hull now twisted and bashed. It didn’t look as though it should still be standing upright in the water. But it was.

“Sister,” Rickon found his voice, “the King lives.” He shouted this to her back, as she picked up her skirts and took off at a run down the long, winding stairs to the harbour. “Fuck,” she could hear Rickon curse behind her, “Sansa… careful!” She let the irony of Rickon cautioning care pass her by, and simply let him help her to her feet when she fell, twice, on the steep steps before reaching the docks. By the time she had rushed to the gangway, out of breath and sweaty, her hands and knees bleeding from her tumbles and hair in disarray, the soldiers who had stumbled from the ship onto solid ground stared at her in shock.

“My Queen,” one soldier attempted, bowing as deeply as his emaciated body could manage.

Regaining her breath, she demanded, “Where is the King?”

“He is below still, Your Grace, ensuring the transfer of the prisoners...”

She pushed past the soldiers, holding back her nausea at the smell that clung to the whole vessel and everyone aboard, and the men on deck stepped away from her deferentially and bowed. “The King?” she snapped at them, and they pointed as a man to the ladder that led below-deck. Rickon jumped down first, then helped Sansa scramble into the darkness with him. She could barely see at first, and if she’d thought the smell offensive on deck, she gagged at the stale stench below. The heat from the press of bodies of those still in the hold had sweat dripping from her forehead.

“Your Grace?” Rickon called into the damp, black, cramped space.

Sansa could hear Stannis grinding his teeth and whipped her head to follow the sound. Her eyes were adjusting slowly to the poor light, and she could see a man bent over a high table, hastily scratching words onto a parchment. Rickon called again, “I’ve come from the keep, Your Grace…”

Stannis lifted his head from the parchment, and Sansa could just make out the shape of him in the hazy light from the porthole opposite. “What of my wife, boy? Eh?” he shouted at Rickon, who was still hidden in the shadows with Sansa at his back. “What news of my wife?” Stannis thrust the parchment and quill at the frightened clerk next to him and fixed his gaze on Rickon. “Do you not kneel before your king, boy?”

Rickon dropped to one knee so fast that Sansa nearly lost her balance, and gripped Rickon’s shoulder for support. He had to twist round and get a grip of her middle to stop her falling. She heard Stannis suck in his breath at the sight of her, mussed and nauseous and holding much to tightly to some unknown male.

“Who in the seven hells are you that you would bring the Queen of Westeros into the stinking bowels of this ship?” he thundered. Rickon began to stutter out his name, but Sansa saved him the trouble.

“This, Your Grace, is your good-brother, Rickon Stark.”

Stannis looked her up and down critically. “Then I shan’t need to behead him for touching the Queen?” She shook her head slowly, just the hint of a smile playing at the edges of her expression. She had intended, unthinking, to rush straight into her husband’s embrace, but faced once again with the reality of Stannis and his position, she set aside her romantic notions of a joyful reunion and tried to pick up the scraps of her dignity.

“Your Grace,” she performed the best curtsey she could under the circumstances, “You are most welcome home.” He looked far too thin and he was coated in a thick layer of… she really didn’t want to think to hard of what had turned his pale skin that odd colour. But when she brought her eyes back up to his face, she realised that Stannis Baratheon was smiling. And she smiled back. He looked dirty and bloodied and injured, but he still looked like the man who had held her through the pain of two childbeds without complaint.

“Wife,” he breathed, and he reached out for her, pulling her over the head of the still-kneeling Rickon and into his arms.

Gods, he stank. And she would have liked to say she didn’t care, that she was only glad to hold him again, but the stories of war heroes returning victorious to their ladies never included such pertinent details.  She tried to hold back the retching, but just one embrace left Sansa in mind of boiling herself with the linens. He released her, and Sansa took a step back towards Rickon, still kneeling rather inconveniently on the floor where anyone might trip over him.

“Oh stand up, Rickon,” she groused. He looked to Stannis for approval before he rose hesitantly to his feet.

“Lord Rickon, escort the Queen back to her chambers. I shall be there within the hour, my Queen,” he reached for her hand and pressed a kiss to her palm. “Perhaps my wife would be so kind as to prepare a bath.”

“As Your Grace wishes,” Sansa gripped his hand in hers. “And I shall throw open the washhouses of the keep for our returning soldiers,” she said, casting her gaze over the filthy men still on board. “And have food prepared so that our brave warriors may regain their strength.” She looked back up to meet Stannis’s eyes. “I shall await Your Grace most anxiously.”

…

Sansa was having two deep, steaming baths of water prepared when he finally trod up the long, switchbacked path from the harbour and waved off all courtiers – even Davos, taken aback by their unexpected return – to arrive at her chambers. When he asked to see the children, she told him, rather than asked, that he would bathe before greeting Shireen and the boys. As the servants poured pail after pail of fresh, hot water into the copper tubs, Sansa sat him down on a chair near the window and produced a pair of sheers.

“Do you mean to finish the job after the Night King failed to kill me, woman?” he asked with a yawn. Sansa just patted one hand against his shoulder, then took a brush to his overlong hair. He closed his eyes with a sigh of contentment as she tugged the bristles across his scalp, working through the knots and detritus, then repeating the process with his beard. He’d hacked at it once or twice with a knife, but in the end had given up and accepted that at least a heavy beard kept his face marginally warmer. As she worked, a perfumed breeze of salted air blew through the banks of flowers spread below her window, and the repetitive slosh of water as the tubs were filled, lulled him very nearly to a slumber. He felt his hair slip down his neck and back as Sansa’s scissors snip-snipped, and he found himself focussing on the rhythm of her breathing and the gentle touches of her hands on his face or chest as she worked.

He was not asleep, but most assuredly at peace, when she knelt before him and took his face in both of her hands. He opened his eyes to find her smiling at her results. “There, now I can see you again.”

“I fear there are no improvements to report in my appearance, my lady. War generally does not render a man more handsome.”

“I do not feel that there was any need for improvement in your visage, my lord,” she grinned back. “And I am rather pleased to see your handsome face.” She stood and held out her hand, playfully tugging him to his feet. The servants had brought in the last of the water, and Sansa had barred her door, leaving them alone with each other. “Those clothes seem to have adhered to your body. Shall I cut them off?”

“Enough of your cheek,” he admonished, and together they managed to untangle and unclasp and untie what they could, and cut what they could not. He was almost too tired to feel uncomfortable, standing naked before her. When tears formed in her eyes, he was glad that she directed him straight into one of the tubs.

“You are injured, Stannis,” she nodded to a hastily-stitched stab would on his left thigh. She hadn’t yet noticed the deep cut between his ribs, just below his heart, and he didn’t point it out to her. “And you are far too thin.”

“True,” he answered, not really wanting to explore the pain and starvation and the piercing cold and the endless strain on every part of his body. Not when he was sinking into the soothing water, and Sansa using a rough cloth to scrub away the worst of the grime. She bade him sink his head beneath the water, and for a moment he heard nothing, and only felt the gentle rub of her fingers over his cheekbones and the back of his neck. He re-emerged, and she commenced rubbing at his hair and neck and face with the soapy cloth. She scrubbed and rinsed as the water turned an oily brown-black, working the soap between fingers and then between toes, along his ankles and across his chest, where she finally saw the second wound. She handed over the cloth and soap to let him complete the job of washing his body. Then, when he had been rubbed almost raw with lye soap, she bid him stand and enter the second tub.

He knew immediately that Sansa had ordered pine boughs infused into this water, for the bath smelled sweet as a forest meadow. She took a fine herbed soap and massaged it gently into his scalp, his head tilted back against the lip of the warm copper tub. The bath seemed to last forever, Sansa thoroughly kneading every sore muscle in his arms and back and legs, then rubbing a warm oil with the same scent of herbs as the soap into every part of this skin. Quite possibly, this was the most relaxed he had ever been in his life, and even the sensation of Sansa swishing a soft cloth around his balls felt sensuous rather than sexual. His cock, like the rest of him, was too exhausted to do more than twitch with remembered interest. Later, there would be time later.

When he stood from the second bath, she held out clean linens and rubbed him dry, then produced a tunic and breeches so gossamer-soft that he feared they would tear just being pulled onto his body. Then she unbarred the door and called for the maester and some food and fresh water. Servants carted away the water and tubs and his clothes as Tarly restitched his leg and disinfected the wound on his chest.

At long last, Stannis sat at the table near her window, eating indiscriminately from a board of cheese and cold meats and washing it down with lemon water. Clean, dry, warm and fed all at once for the first time in over a year, he finally let his gaze wander across his wife’s body. “I wish to see the children before I sleep. Please bring them here,” he informed her. “And when I wake, I wish to make another.”

Sansa blushed, but instead of heading through the door to fetch Shireen, Ned and Steffon, she approached him. Smiling gently, she perched on his uninjured leg and took his face in her hands. He slipped his hands about her waist and pulled her close, as she pulled him into a kiss. She still tasted like water, clean and pure, and as good as it was to kiss her and hold her, what struck him as even better was that she had initiated it. She had arranged all of his care herself.

“I shall go fetch the children, my lord husband,” she answered, resting her forehead against his. Despite her words, she didn’t move from his lap, and she kissed his face and his neck a few more times. Then she finally said the words - “Stannis, I care very much for you” - and he didn’t mind at all that it had taken her nearly four years longer than it had taken him to find the courage to say them.

…

Rickon kicked his horse into a full gallop before Winterfell even appeared on the horizon, and Sansa rolled her eyes at her grand dreams of watching him trot solemnly into his home like the Lord he now was. She was an idiot. He rode hellbent for leather into the courtyard, Shaggydog on his tail, screeching his arrival to the highest towers until Jon himself stuck his head out the window of his solar and shouted with a grin for Rickon to shut it.

“I am to be married too!” Rickon shouted back, causing Jon to raise his eyebrows sceptically. “Is true! The king told me himself and then I…”

“Rickon!” Jon had roared back. “You will stop shouting family business across the keep _right now_!” He pulled his head back inside the window, plucking his cloak from the hook by the door and began to rush downstairs in time to greet the arrivals. He paused to let Ygritte join him, though she was laughing uncontrollably at Rickon. “I shall have a word with my good-brother,” he groused. “I am not certain that Storm’s End will be far enough for my liking.”

The long spring had bloomed across the north, and when Stannis finally helped Sansa out of the wheelhouse in Winterfell’s courtyard, she gasped at the changes. Gone was the stern, muddy enclosure of old: now it held tubs of tough, northern nut trees and a long border of blackcurrant bushes in full bloom. Smaller glass gardens clung to the walls, with fruit trees and flowering shrubs bright against the grey brickwork. The Stark banners flew proudly from the rebuilt walls, where the Army of the Dead had made their last stand against the living.

Jon’s wedding to Ygritte would cement an alliance with the Wildlings, now living both north and south of the partially destroyed Wall. Stannis felt it necessary to come north to show the Crown’s  support for the Free Folk and for the marriage, but in truth he would have come north now even if Jon had not finally convinced his longstanding lover to marry him. Sansa had never once asked to visit her family home, but he saw her longing every time she sent or received a raven from Winterfell, or from the Dreadfort, where Arya and Gendry Stark were lord and lady of the keep. A great many ravens travelled the path from Winterfell and the Dreadfort to the Red Keep each week, and Stannis reckoned it was time to save the birds some strain and take his wife home.

For two days after he’d told her of the trip North, Sansa had kissed him at every opportunity, and held his hand beneath the table at mealtimes in the hall, her big eyes almost tearful with happiness and gratitude. He pretended grumpiness at the necessity of the journey – “I swore I’d not go North again after the war” – but she saw through him. You secretly love a wedding, she teased, and I imagine that you want to broker that marriage between Shireen and Rickon while we’re there…

“I do not love weddings, secretly or otherwise,” he said rather sharply, then lowered his voice and drew her closer. “I love you. I suspect not so secretly.” He pushed her away gently and raised his voice again. “And I will not broker the marriage, I shall command it.”

“That’s Storm’s End planned for, and who for the Twins? Jon’s children?”

“Jon’s children,” Stannis scoffed. “I suspect he will want me to legitimate the two he’s already got off her.” At Sansa’s raised eyebrow, he quickly acquiesced. “And I will do so, of course, though it will make no bloody difference to anyone up there.”

Now, looking at the rebuilt Winterfell with Sansa’s hand in his, Stannis cursed himself for not bringing her sooner. But it had been difficult to find the right time – Cattandra had been born 10 months after his return from war, and there had been much to settle in the southern kingdoms. Sandor Clegane was proving his worth as castellan at Casterly Rock until Tommen came of age, and though Stannis had never quite forgiven the man, he could in the end not deny that The Hound had saved Sansa from Joffrey in the same fashion that Stannis himself had saved her from the Bolton bastard. Besides,  though she never mentioned it, he knew that Sansa fretted over Clegane’s fate at the Wall. Sansa would not – ever – visit the Rock, or the Westerlands, and as long as Clegane kept his distance, Stannis would keep his word to Sansa.

Once down from the wheelhouse, Ned stomped impatiently on the hard dirt of the courtyard until he spotted his uncle striding from the doorway that led to the great hall. “Uncle Jon!” he called, barrelling forward, and Jon dropped to one knee to scoop him up. After Jon’s visit to King’s Landing a year ago, Ned had talked of little other than his dragon-wolf uncle, the hero who had slain the Night King. He had followed Jon about the Red Keep like a puppy for two solid moons, stumbling under the weight of Longclaw while he tried to act as Jon’s squire.

Gracefully sidestepping Jon and Ned, Ygritte walked purposefully to Steffon, who was trying to run to Jon as well. She picked him up and settled him on her hip. “Is this the brave Prince Steffon who can tame a direwolf with a single look?” she asked with dramatic awe. “Yes!” Steffon agreed forcefully. “That’s me!”

Stannis let his wife go running for Jon and Ygritte, watching carefully to ensure she was not overly jostled by their embraces. Then he poked his head back into the wheelhouse. Cattie sat forlornly on the empty cushions, abandoned even by the ever-dutiful Shireen, and she held her arms out when she saw him. “Papa up,” she insisted, and Stannis bundled her into a woollen blanket and lifted her onto his shoulders. “There, my princess, you can see the whole of your mother’s half-rabid family from here.” He paused to begin his introductions. “There’s your Uncle Jon, who has been fornicating with your Auntie Ygritte for – what is it – three years now? Your bastard cousins – do not tell your mother that I said that, and I have the parchments conferring legitimacy in my bag – are just behind Jon. There’s Aunt Arya. Yes, darling, that’s an auntie, though the Seven know it’s hard to tell from outward appearances. That’s her husband, Gendry, and he’s your Uncle Robert’s bastard, now a Stark so that no one can threaten your brother’s claim to the throne.” Stannis sighed. “That’s Brandon Stark hugging Shireen. And you already know Uncle Rickon, less said the better,” Stannis scowled, still not thrilled about Shireen’s relationship with Rickon, no matter how much sense it made. Then he scowled even deeper, seeing Sansa stooping to pick up her 2-year-old nephew for a snuggle.

“Sansa!” he called in as light a voice as he could manage, which nevertheless halted all activity as everyone turned to hear the king’s orders. Instead of shouting, he quickly closed the distance to his wife and pulled her close. “Tarly said very clearly that you’re not to lift Steffon or Cattandra, so that means no lifting Robb.” She looked down sadly at her nephew, pouting beneath his wild red curls. “Why don’t you sit down inside and you can hold Robb and Getta on your lap?” Sansa and Robb both brightened at that, and she took his little hand and led him into her childhood home, with Ygritte and Steffon following behind, chatting away like old friends.

Jon ushered the rest of the family into the hall, lifting Cattie down from Stannis’ shoulders, worrying aloud that the little girl should be by the fire. Arya sparred with Ned, trying to fight her way through to the hall while Ned defended the keep with a stick he’d picked up in the yard. Stannis stood back for a moment, watching them all yap and tussle like the pack they were as they disappeared through doorway. He sensed Bran wheeling up beside him.

“How long do you have, before it becomes dangerous for Sansa to travel south?”

Stannis had grown used to Bran’s prophetic ramblings during the war, but he still found the man’s eyes disconcerting. “We can stay a full moon, and perhaps a sennight or two longer if Davos does not have need of me before that. It was a long trip, and Sansa wishes the children to know her home.” He turned to take in his good-brother, who seemed healthier, stronger than when he’d last seen him. But then they all were. All who had survived. “What have you seen of the babe?”

Bran snorted an uncharacteristic laugh. “Sam sent a raven a week ago making sure that we had arrangements in place for Sansa. I know nothing else.” Bran met Stannis’ eyes. “My sister is happy and well.”

Stannis glared at Bran, refusing to defend his treatment of his wife to anyone, even her brother.

“It wasn’t a question, Your Grace. _That_ , I have seen.” His blank brown eyes seemed to take Stannis’ measure in a glance. “I will see you inside, Your Grace.” Bran inclined his head in an approximation of a bow, and wheeled himself to the door.

Stannis waited a moment longer in the courtyard, listening to the raucous sounds of the Starks and Baratheons that carried from the hall, as the servants emptied the wheelhouse of their trunks and carried them indoors. He could hear Arya spinning a tale and Sansa’s laughter ringing off the stone walls of the hall and out the open windows to the courtyard, loud and clear. Shaking the dust of the road from his cloak, Stannis went to find his family, mentally planning to order (though he would say _invite_ when he gave the command) Arya and Gendry to visit King’s Landing for the birth the next prince or princess. Sansa would like that. Arya made her laugh, and he wanted hear that same reckless laughter of Sansa’s bouncing around the great hall of the Red Keep. Loud and unapologetic and exquisitely happy.


End file.
